One technique for electrically connecting a semiconductor die to a supporting substrate, such as an interposer, is to use a wire bond. One end of the wire bond may be attached to a bond pad of the semiconductor die, the wire bond may extend from the semiconductor die to the substrate, and another end of the wire bond may be attached to a terminal pad of the substrate. Because semiconductor devices may require many electrical connections between the semiconductor die and the substrate, many wire bonds may extend from various locations on the semiconductor die to corresponding locations on the substrate. As the size of semiconductor devices decreases and their complexity increases, the size (e.g., diameter) of individual wire bonds may decrease and the wire bonds may be positioned closer to one another. Moreover, some semiconductor die configurations (e.g., those having bond pads not located at peripheries of the dice) may require long wire bonds to bridge the space between the bond pads of the die and the bond pads of the substrate. However, conventional wire bonds are somewhat limited in length, to about 2 mm. It would be desirable to substantially extend the practical length of wire bonds to, for example, 5 mm, particularly when bond pads are placed in a central region of a semiconductor die, or other location remote from the die periphery.
Frequently, the wire bonds and semiconductor die are encapsulated in another material to protect them from environmental contaminants and to fix their locations relative to one another within a semiconductor device package. For example, a polymer encapsulant material may flow over and around the wire bonds and semiconductor die and be cured. The progressing encapsulant material may, however, displace or even deform the wire bonds in a phenomenon termed “wire bond sweep,” which may cause the wire bonds to contact one another or to contact an active surface of the semiconductor die. These contacts (i.e., “shorts”) may cause the semiconductor device to malfunction or fail. As may be appreciated by one of ordinary skill in the art, the propensity toward wire bond sweep increases as wire bond length increases.